Think you perform well in your teaching job in London? Want to prove it on a world stage?

A competition has been set up to help identify the world's best teacher and the lucky winner is set to land a $1 million (£620,000) prize.

The event will start next year and is being funded by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, United Arab Emirates vice-president and ruler of Dubai and the Varkey Gems Foundation, which is the charitable arm of an international chain of private schools and recently published a report into teacher status.

Sheikh Al Maktoum said he was backing the competition as teachers are the "real agents of change" and by supporting teachers and education, the award is helping humanity to progress.

Teachers hoping to showcase their credentials will be given further details of the criteria early next year and then nominations will be announced at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai during March.

So far, it is known that there will be nominations from individual countries and then candidates will be subjected to an international judging process that will include "former leaders from around the world and prominent members of the community" along with education experts and students.

Former US president Bill Clinton is honorary chairman of the foundation, which hopes to honour the teaching profession in the same way in which the Nobel prize recognises achievement in other fields.

The research the group conducted prior to the announcement of the award showed that there were wide variations in the amount of respect accorded to teachers across different regions of the world.

Sunny Varkey, founder of the Varkey GEMS Foundation, said: "We want to promote teachers as stars and to support the quality of education to highlight the enormous impact teachers have on our lives."

Do teachers need more recognition? Let us know your thoughts on the subject.

An increasing amount of teachers, pupils and whole schools were caught cheating in this summer's GCSE, AS and A-level exams, according to new official figures.

The rising number of cheaters was most dramatic among teachers, as there was a 62 per cent increase, with 97 suffering penalties in 2013, compared to the 60 who were caught in 2012.

In total, 2,590 pupils were caught cheating in their exams - a rise of 1.6 per cent on last year - while the number of penalties imposed on schools rose by four per cent, with 135 found guilty of breaching the rules.

What makes the Ofqual statistics even more worrying is that there was a seven per cent reduction in the overall number of scripts submitted for all secondary and higher education exams this year.

A total of 23 people in teaching jobs were suspended from involvement with exams as a result of this malpractice, but most of the teachers involved received a written warning.

The most common offence committed by teachers involved them giving inappropriate assistance to candidates (59 cases), while the second highest amount of penalties were issued to teaching staff who entered the exam room to coach or prompt candidates or allowed pupils to continue working for an extended period beyond the official finishing time.

Although the figures make for worse reading than last year, there have been more penalties issued once before. This was back in 2008, but there was a higher number of exams sat that year.

Ofqual's report added instances of malpractice "remained extremely rare", explaining that the 2,590 penalties amounted to 0.019 per cent of the total papers marked. The number of candidates who were awarded extra marks because they were disadvantaged in some way during the exam also increased this year.

As a teacher or someone looking for a secondary teaching job, how do you feel about these figures? Let us know your thoughts.

Parents who successfully campaigned to stop a 'failing' south-east primary school from being turned into an academy hope their hard work can inspire other schools in a similar situation.

Following considerable efforts by teachers and parents, the Department of Education (DfE) has announced that Snaresbrook Primary School had made enough improvement to stop the process that threatened to force it out of local authority control.

Back in July, the school was rated inadequate in all categories by an Ofsted report, but now it has the fourth best results for the age group in the entire borough.

Campaigners did not believe that automatically turning the school into an academy would improve matters and those who backed the current school leadership were set to deliver a petition signed by over 2,500 people to Downing Street before the DfE announcement.

Campaigner Paul Daintry told the East London and West Essex Guardian Series: "We have a lot of praise for them for pushing through and recognising the progress the school has made, instead of bulldozing through with academy status which they could easily have done, but instead they backed down."

"I hope it proves to Michael Gove and the DfE that they need to be listening to parents and teachers and will make them see they need to give schools like us a chance."

Fellow campaigner Claudia Martin said the DfE's decision did come as a shock, but now teaching staff and the school can get on with helping pupils without the shadow of changing status hanging over them.

If you are a teacher or somebody looking for a teaching job in London or the south-east, let us know your views on the academy status. Should the DfE be more open to allowing schools and local authorities to change their own fortunes around? If you have been through the switch to an academy while working in a classroom, have you noticed any improvements?

GCSE exams in England are set for their biggest shake-up in a decade, according to Ofqual.

The regulator has confirmed the reforms it will be making to the exams and headline changes mean most subject assessments will no longer include coursework, while results will be given as numbers rather than the traditional letter grading system.

People in secondary teaching jobs will have a few years to get to grip with the alterations as they will not come into effect until 2017 when English and maths will be the first subjects affected.

However, the two-year structure of GCSEs means pupils will begin studying the new courses in English language, English literature and maths from the start of the 2015 academic year.

In total, around 20 other popular GCSE subjects will be reformed in a similar manner around 12 months later, with the first classes sitting these exams in 2018.

When grades are finally awarded, pupils will be given a result from one (lowest) to nine (highest), although students who fail will still receive the U grade for unclassified.

As well as the eradication of coursework, modular exams will also be abolished, meaning all tests will be taken together two years after pupils begin learning the syllabus - much in the same format as O-levels, which predate GCSEs.  

Other changes will see more weight given to spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Glenys Stacey, the head of Ofqual, said the changes were "fundamental".

She added: "This is the biggest change in a generation. [GCSEs] have been around for over 25 years but now we are seeing fresh content, a different structure, high-quality assessment coming in.

"It's a significant change for students and for schools."

As somebody looking for a secondary teaching job, how do you feel about such sweeping changes? Will it be easy to adapt to? Were the reforms needed or are they more evidence of government tinkering?

Tell us your views.

Teaching is a profession that constantly adapts to changes in modern life and nowhere is this more apparent than in the use of technology.

A crucial aspect of preparing pupils for their lives after school is making them feel comfortable with devices and software that they may use in employment in the future.

There is also the educational benefits that technology can bring to consider and some schools in the UK will be given hundreds of thousands of pounds to test whether iPads and texting can be used to improve learning levels among poorer children in the UK.

The Education Endowment Foundation has announced a series of grants that will help people in teaching jobs use the technology in innovative ways and then the charity wants to collect evidence of how successful the projects are.

One of the schools that will receive funding from the scheme is Rosendale Primary School in Lambeth. The £253,000 grant will enable teachers to test the benefit of iPads in the classroom.

Pupils use the devices to take photographs and video recordings, they then tag the clips with notes about how difficult they found the work, so teachers can assess the exercise.

Another use of the funding will see £532,000 be made available to roll out a scheme which has been tested by teams from Harvard and Bristol universities. It aims to sends text messages directly to parents about their children’s progress in the classroom in a bid to motivate pupils and boost parental involvement.

As a teacher or somebody who is looking for a teaching job in the UK, what are your views on these schemes? The use of technology in the classroom is often seen as a positive thing, but can the money be spent on other areas of education that are in needed of investment?

Tell us your thoughts on the subject.

The government is set to face more academy controversy in the coming days, if a leaked document proves to be true.

A Department for Education (DfE) report seen by the BBC suggests that the process of turning under-performing schools into academies is both resource intensive and unjustified in many cases.

The 'What Stops at the DfE' document outlines that £290 million will be taken from the education budget by 2015-16 and civil servants have suggested that ministers look at the savings that can be made by not forcing schools into academies.

However, it appears that education secretary Michael Gove has already dismissed the suggestion.

A DfE spokesman said: "Ministers are clear we will not stand by when a school is failing its pupils, and that the strong support of a proven sponsor is the best way to see rapid and sustainable improvements.

"While it is vital that government constantly considers ways to cut bureaucracy and save public money, we make no apology for prioritising improving the education of children in the country's worst-performing schools."

National Union of Teachers general secretary Christine Blower responded by saying that it was becoming increasingly clear that Mr Gove's academy 'pet project' was costing taxpayers money, which could be more productively spent elsewhere in the education system.

Academies are privately-run schools and although they receive state funding, they have control over their own admissions and who they employ in teaching jobs. The conversion process sees the academies get up to £110,000 in start-up costs.

Mr Gove recently angered stakeholders when he ordered the Downhills Primary School to be taken over by an academy chain, despite 94 per cent of parents opposing the move.

As someone who has spent time training and earning teaching qualifications, how do you feel about schools being forced into academies which have the autonomy to employ who they like in teaching jobs. Is that fair? Do academies lead to an improvement in standards?

Tell us your views on the academy debate. 

There could soon be a shortage of suitable candidates to fill the UK's primary and secondary teaching jobs, an education expert has suggested. 

James Noble-Rogers of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET) believes the lack of detail in the government's teacher training plans could hide possible shortages.

He issued a freedom of information request to the government for the data, which outlines how the coalition has allocated the number of trainee places to subjects in secondary or primary education, reports the BBC.

In a letter to the schools minister David Laws, Mr Noble-Rogers said: "This information has been published as a matter of course in the past.

"It should not be necessary in an open democracy for UCET or anyone else to resort to legislation to obtain information of this kind."

The stats also show more teacher training funding will be taken away from universities and given to the School Direct scheme, which aims to provide more hands-on training.

A Department for Education (DfE) spokeswoman responded by stating that the government will publish a more transparent and detailed breakdown of allocations - including subject numbers - within the next few weeks, once confirmation has been provided by universities and schools.

She added the DfE has hit 95 per cent of its recruitment target for the coming academic year and the new School Direct scheme has proved to be very popular among people looking to train for a teacher job.

In August, Professor John Howson of Oxford Brookes University suggested Schools Direct figures pointed to a possible shortage of science and maths teacher specialists in the future.

As someone who has trained for a career in teaching, what do you think about this? Are the figures being used to posture in a row over funding, or is there a genuine problem with the selection criteria or other aspects of the newer Schools Direct training course?

Let us know what you think.

People in science teaching jobs in London appear to be helping their pupils get the most out of the subject as two female students from schools in the capital have been named the 2013 Royal Institution’s L'Oreal Young Scientists of the Year.

The duo were crowned after a national competition that aimed to explore the science of colour. The most talented key stage three pupils from around the country were whittled down to a group of 18 and Year 9 students Alicia Pope and Anna Stevenson won the annual title at new Spectacular Colour Chemistry workshop to mark the L'Oreal Young Scientist Centre's 4th anniversary at the Royal Institution.

Alicia from Grey Coat Hospital School in Westminster said: "I really enjoyed the day, especially the experience of working with different dyes.

"Students don't normally get to use the equipment we were introduced to today until university, so it was amazing for us to have the chance to use things like colour meters in our own experiments.

"I think chemistry is a fun and enjoyable subject and I'm definitely going to carry on studying it at school."

To reach the final workshop stage, pupils were asked to think creatively about colour and the world around them, then submit a piece which described their favourite colour in a scientific manner.

The entries were judged by an expert panel, including the director of Science and Education at The Royal Institution Dr Gail Cardew.

Recent figures associated with teaching jobs for the next academic year suggest that schools could be hit by a shortage of science teachers, although the government has since responded by stating that it has hit 95 per cent of its recruiting targets for September.

How do you feel that science is taught in school? Does more need to be done to attract suitable people into the science teaching profession? Do pupils get enough experience with lab equipment?

Tell us what you think about science in the classroom.